


compass rose

by skiaphilia



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 15:19:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skiaphilia/pseuds/skiaphilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The drift is easy as breathing, easy as living, easy as a lot of things aren’t. Chuck learns that the connection he has with his father might be useful for more than fighting Kaiju. (Features trans Chuck; see notes for warnings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	compass rose

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for body dysphoria and one brief mention of misgendering, aaaaand family interactions if that's not really something you want to see.

(In, out.)

The drift is easy as breathing, easy as living, easy as a lot of things aren’t. They say they’ve never felt two people with a connection this—not strong, or, well, _strong_ , yes, but the word they're looking for is closer to _fluid_. They say that Striker Eureka is the best Jaeger in the fleet for that very reason, that when the Hansen duo breathes, stars trail in unison from their lips, form nebulae, explode. They say they have not lost a fight.

Chuck says he doesn’t care. Chuck shrugs, lets the stars tumble from his mouth onto the ground in a heavy sigh. Kaiju after kaiju after kaiju after kaiju, and really, all that matters is the drift.

(Up, down.)

There are things that Chuck’s never said that his father ought to know.

Mako knows, flits through the cracks in his walls and crops his hair close with safety scissors even though she knows she’ll get grounded for it.

She matches him inch-for-inch in height until age fourteen; he has a growth spurt that the doctors cannot fathom. They part ways. He gets taller still.

(Left, right.)

Chuck and Charlotte both mean ‘free man,’ which, for a while, he thinks is ironic.

(Forward, back.)

One time, he’s thinking about it when the handshake’s initiated, how his suit doesn’t do him justice, how it makes him more nervous than fifty thousand pounds of giant lizard monster barrelling towards him, and—

Shit.

He tries to push those thoughts to the back of his head. Tries, tries, tries. Concentrates on that rather than keeping steady for the drop. Nearly makes Striker go ass-over-head. Sends them out of sync.

That night, he goes to his room, he sits on his bed, and he lets the stars form a cloud around him that’s dense enough to hide in.

(North, south.)

That morning, his father’s in the doorway, all brooding eyes and crossed arms, every muscle he has (and that’s a lot, considering the fact that he’s Hercules fuckin’ Hansen) stretched tighter than their Handshake on a bad day. He has something folded into one hand that he tosses at Chuck when he’s sure his eyes are open.

"After yesterday," Herc says, "you seemed." A flicker of a flicker of the mental bridge between them suggests ‘uncomfortable,’ perhaps ‘upset.’ Chuck doesn’t know. His dad doesn’t do this a lot. In fact, after that he turns on his heel (about-face!) and leaves the room, and Chuck looks down at the bundle in his hands, and it takes him a second—a single beat of his heart, ba-dum—to realise what it is.

(East, west.)

He wears it when he can. It’s not practical for fighting, and they don’t have the time for Chuck to leave the program for surgery, but Herc can feel his happiness even when he’s not connected to his mind. The first time he corrects the Marshall—“that’s my _son_ ,"—the kid has to excuse himself.

They say that when the Hansen men are linked, stars spill from their lips, trembling, soaking into the earth.

Chuck shrugs, hides a smile, says they’re being overzealous; when the cameras leave, he’d have to agree.

**Author's Note:**

> this was. really cathartic


End file.
